Sony Blames Lack of Interest on UMD Passport Program Being Left Out of the States

Over on Wired, there’s a pretty extensive interview with Sony’s head of worldwide game development studios, Shuhei Yoshida. There was lots of chit-chat and back-and-forth, but one of the salient points to come out of the piece was the discussion on why Sony decided to keep the UMD Passport program—which would allow PSP owners to play their old disc-based games on their fresh new Vitas—out of the US.

One reason, it seems, is because Americans are just don’t want it bad enough:

“I’m sorry we are not doing [the UMD Passport Program] in the States, but there are two factors that contributed to the decision as I understand it. I’m not in a position to make that kind of business decision. The system has been introduced in Japan, where there is a much larger demand for PSP games. When you look at the release schedule of new titles there are still lots of PSP games being released in Japan and being announced for release. Lots of people who are interested in trying Vita are also interested in playing PSP games that they might purchase before Vita comes out, and will not necessarily choose the digital version.”

The other half, though, is pretty reasonable; namely, PSP games are just more expensive in Japan, and digital copies of games can be bought for the price of conversion anyway here in the States:

“The other point is that when you look at PSP titles sold digitally in the States or Europe, games are sold for a really reasonable price. You can buy Final Fantasy Tactics for $10. That’s a great price. There are many, many games that are sold at an affordable price. Because people in Japan are not getting the digital copy for free, because it costs us money to develop and maintain the system so we are asking people to pay somewhere between $5 and $10 to receive the digital copy in addition to what they have on the UMD. When you compare that to the price of games here, PSP games in Japan are sold at a much higher price, so people see the value in spending the $5 to $10 to get the digital copy. But when the games are already sold at a lower price in the U.S. we see less value in introducing that kind of system. The combination of the new titles available, or the lack of, and the price difference, the company decided to do that.”

Even still, how much does it really cost to maintain what seems to be a relatively automated system? I dunno…register a game’s serial number, pay a fee, they send you a download code…is it really that hard to make things equal for the rest of the world? I don’t know.

I don’t have a PSP or any UMD games, so, you know, it doesn’t really matter to me. But it might matter to YOU.

Via Wired

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